Income from continuing operations rose to $927 million, or
53 cents a share, from $880 million, or 44 cents, a year
earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement.
Excluding some items, profit was 54 cents a share, a cent higher
than the average estimate of 16 analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Bristol-Myers is cutting more than $2.5 billion in expenses
by 2012 and eliminated 7,000 jobs, 20 percent of its workforce,
last year. The company is also narrowing its focus on
biotechnology and making acquisitions to replace medicines
facing generic competition during the next two years.

“The restructuring of the cost base, increased investment
in high-growth opportunities, visible growth for Abilify and
other newer drugs, combined with stable U.S. Plavix performance,
can fuel a rising stock price,” said Barbara Ryan, an analyst
with Deutsche Bank AG in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a July 12
research report.

Bristol-Myers rose 18 cents to $24.93 at 4 p.m. in New York
Stock Exchange composite trading. The company has gained 23
percent in the past 12 months.

2010 Forecast

Sales rose 2.2 percent to $4.77 billion, missing analysts’
estimates by $65 million for the second quarter.

The company repeated its 2010 profit forecast of $2.10 to
$2.20 a share excluding some items. Bristol also reaffirmed its
2013 earnings projection of at least $1.95 a share.

Investors had wondered if the company would reduce its 2013
figure because of U.S. health-care legislation and cuts to
prices in Europe, said Seamus Fernandez, an analyst with Leerink
Swann Co., in a report on July 16.

Revenue from Plavix, the world’s second-biggest selling
medicine, after New York-based Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor, rose 5.7
percent from a year earlier to $1.63 billion. Plavix is co-
marketed with Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis SA.

Continuing operations accounted for all of the company’s
net income of $927 million in the current quarter. Net income
from the second quarter of 2009, including an infant-nutrition
business split off by the company last year, was $983 million.

Share Repurchase

Per-share figures this year were calculated on fewer
shares; Bristol-Myers started repurchasing $3 billion in stock
in May.

Health-care legislation passed in March reduced sales by
1.5 percent, Bristol-Myers said. The law expanded the number of
hospitals serving low-income patients eligible for reduced
prices on medicines, increased discounts to Medicaid and made
subsidies for retirees’ prescriptions taxable.

Second-quarter sales of Abilify, a mood stabilizer, fell
1.6 percent from a year earlier, to $633 million. Bristol-Myers
has said the U.S. health-law changes will hurt sales of that
drug because Medicaid, the federal and state health program for
low-income people, is cutting rebates.

“The likely consequences of the recently enacted health-
care reform legislation are generally coming in in-line with
expectations, with what we continue to regard as manageable
long-term risks and costs for pharma,” Ryan said in the July 12
report.